


no other way to say it

by Sonora



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Angst, Bad Sex, Break Up, Friends With Benefits, M/M, Open Relationships, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-24
Updated: 2015-03-24
Packaged: 2018-03-19 08:43:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3603726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sonora/pseuds/Sonora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yancy had never been in love with Chuck.  There were too many things wrong for that to be a possibility.  But fuck if he hadn’t at least thought they were friends.</p><p>Or, Yancy and Chuck maybe had a good thing going on, and then it all blew up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	no other way to say it

**Author's Note:**

> So... I don't know. They're both assholes, probably.
> 
> Doesn't really matter.
> 
> Have some angst. Needed to get this one off my chest.

“Rals said I might find you up here.”

Yancy doesn’t bother tearing his attention away from his beer, the way the Hong Kong skyline reflects in the green glass. It’s all new, that city, rebuilt over the past two years, newly independent and working hard to reestablish itself as the financial capitol of the Pacific Rim. So much has changed, but everything just seems to want to go back to the way it was.

If only.

“Rals is a nosy little shit,” Yancy grumbles, downs the rest of the beer in one go, and gets another from the carton. He snaps the cap off with his Academy ring. Old trick Herc taught him. 

“Last time I checked, we were still dating.”

The bottle stops halfway to his lips, Yancy’s hand freezing on its own. That pulls his gaze away, over to the side, where Tendo’s standing. Arms folded, mouth pinched at the corners. The expression he gets when he’s about to lay down the law over the comm.

Only now, it softens immediately into concern, then regret, and Yancy closes his eyes, unable to look at it a second longer, Tendo closing the space between them, hand on his knee.

“I didn’t mean... shit, Yance, you know I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Yeah.” He swallows and lets Tendo take the beer away from him. “I guess.”

“I would not break up with you. And I sure as hell wouldn’t do it like that if I did.”

“Thanks.” It’s sarcastic. There’s no other way to say it.

Tendo’s quiet for a moment.

“I love you, Yancy. More than anything.”

Yancy can feel his eyes stinging; it’s relief, and it’s shame, and he’s never felt shame over any of his side flings before. It just went on too long. Got too personal. Got too emotional, tapped into some shit Yancy really couldn’t handle. Chuck’s just _like_ that.

Or maybe it’s time to rethink his position on not talking to psychiatrists. 

“I don’t like seeing you this messed up, man.” Tendo touches his cheek. “Have you tried calling him?”

“And say what?” Tendo frowns and Yancy sighs; his boyfriend’s going to get it sooner or later, and he’s not in the mood for a fight right now. “It went to voicemail, the one time I tried. Answered exactly one email, says he thinks I hate him and he’s busy, and won’t email me back. Fuck only knows where he is right now anyway.”

“Herc says he’s just doing some traveling. You know, backpacking, seeing the world, that shit. Europe, place people won’t recognize him so easily.”

Yancy’s not having it. He knows what Tendo’s trying to say, but it does him no goddamn good, and he says so.

Tendo huffs. “He’s starting MIT in the fall.”

“Which is on the other side of the planet. Does me even less.”

“We could go visit. I’ve never been to Boston.”

Yancy picks his beer back up. “I’m the one who broke it off, remember?”

“As I recall, you told him you just wanted to stop sleeping with him.”

“And apparently, that’s all I was good for,” Yancy snaps. 

Tendo’s hand leaves his thigh, and wraps around his shoulder instead.

Leaning against his boyfriend’s reassuring bulk, Yancy tries to remind himself why this was the right decision again. His relationship with Tendo had always been open, especially during those periods when they were stationed in different places, like the last year or so. Tendo off in Hawaii, helping decommission portions of the PPDC facilities and reintegrating other back into Pearl Harbor. Him, stuck here, helping Herc navigate the insane political situation and his son’s emotionally charged recovery. 

Yancy hadn’t really meant for anything to start up with Chuck, but it had. He fumed at Mako, yelled at Raleigh, fought with his dad, but for whatever reason, when Yancy told him to stop being a little shit and do his PT, he did it. Wasn’t that the kid was a little diva who needed a firm hand; he did. But more to the point, Chuck had liked being taken care of, and Yancy had liked taking care of him.

In bed, at least, that worked.

But while Yancy enjoyed his casual friends-with-benefits hook-ups as much as the next guy did, Chuck had become erratic the last few months. Here one week, gone the next, coming over to Yancy’s quarters unannounced just to talk some nights and breezing in for near-silent sex on others. But the sex had been phasing out in general, Chuck’s school schedule and Yancy’s work not really jiving anymore, games or movies taking the place of nights spent between the sheets, and it had just been kind of... nice.

Well, it would have been nice.

Except that Chuck still expected to be indulged, every goddamn second he deigned to give, and to be able to just pick up and leave whenever he fucking felt like it, and it had all just been odd. Yancy had been missing Tendo terribly, a stress compounded by the increasingly dire geopolitical situation in the region, and he’d been in desperate need of some kind of connection, something sweet. Just... calm.

Maybe he’d pushed too hard.

Maybe he’d misread everything.

But he doesn’t think it was too much to do something, anything, that didn’t involve him having to tie Chuck down or spank him or deal with another of those goddamn horribly angsty father/son role-playing scenarios the kid was so fond of. Not that tying Chuck up and spanking him and hearing him say _daddy_ wasn’t fun, but it was always on him. Always Yancy Becket, doing everything. And sometimes what Chuck wanted in bed just got to be too much, hitting him right in an ugly little part of himself he wished he could rip out, the scar Knifehead had put there, the part that sent him into panic attacks, although it took Yancy far too long to figure out that was what was going on.

PTSD is a fucking bitch.

But Yancy can’t blame everything on that.

It just wasn’t... well, it was what it was.

Chuck takes. He never gives. And Yancy was pretty sure that was because he didn’t know how, but that didn’t make it okay. Didn’t make it any easier to deal with.

Chuck kept asking though, and he wanted the kid to be happy. After what Chuck had been through, he deserved some happiness, didn’t he? And normally, yeah, Yancy kind of gets off on clearly defined power dynamics. It’s sort of why he agreed to an open relationship, because he and Tendo are not like that. Not at all.

Maybe he had just been too long without Tendo.

Maybe he wasn’t a cocky twenty-year-old anymore.

But whatever it was, the one time he’d tried to ask Chuck for a little fucking tenderness in bed without having to literally beat it out of him - after a harrowing week he’d spent on the verge of a meltdown, after explaining why he’d used the safe word during their last session, after Chuck promising to come by, remember, all that shit - all he’d gotten was a terse _fine, mate_. Could have meant a hundred different things. 

It hadn’t been good, for either of them.

He just got up, got dressed, and left.

Chuck hadn’t even tried to stop him.

Yancy had broken down completely when he got back to his own room. Took a half-hour shower, called Tendo just to hear his lover’s voice, and decided, much later, in a hotel room in Bangkok, that he couldn’t do it anymore. Sent Chuck an email, and asked if they could get together.

And the little shit had the temerity to tell him, when Yancy was back from the trip and they’d sort of accidentally run into each other in the mess hall, that no, he’d already decided things needed to end.

“You never said there was a problem,” Yancy had said, aghast. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Chuck had shrugged. 

He’d sighed. “I guess we should have talked sooner.”

“Why? I’m just not what you need anymore, am I?”

“Chuck, like I said, I understand, I still care about you...” 

“I don’t want to sit here and talk about my feelings!” Chuck had snapped. “Like your fucking email, every word so carefully chosen. You don’t ever say what you’re really thinking!”

“I don’t want you to misunderstand me. I’m not mad, I’m not saying I never want to talk to you again, I’m...” But the kid’s body language had been impossible to read, in a way that chilled Yancy’s heart. “Jesus, aren’t you upset about this at all? Does this mean anything to you?”

“Of course it does. But we can’t ever really be friends, can we? Not really. I’ve got school and you’ve got Tendo coming back pretty soon, and... nothing’s going to get better by talking about this, fuck. Why are we even sitting here talking about this?” 

That had been it. All he could get. And with Chuck refusing to say anything, anything at all remotely helpful, Yancy had said the one thing that he needed to say that he probably shouldn’t have.

“I feel used. I feel like you used me.”

Because it was true, or at least it was, far as he could figure. If they weren’t friends, then Chuck had only been after the sex, and with the sex gone, what did they have? What could they be?

There hadn’t been a reaction for that either.

So Yancy had left, before he could embarrass himself.

Went back to the Kwoon and beat the shit out of a heavy bag.

Hadn’t helped.

Hadn’t helped that Chuck had picked up and left soon after, either. Some brusque bullshit excuse and not so much as a goodbye.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” Yancy whispers into the beer bottle, and Tendo just takes it away again, takes a long drink himself.

“He’s just a kid,” his boyfriend murmurs in his ear. “He’s still figuring it all out.”

“I just thought... you know, it was like a year. I thought we were at least friends.” He bit down the rest of it, almost drunk enough to let it escape. He doesn’t have so many friends left that he can just throw them away. The war took everything from them. Why wasn’t that enough to at least keep them talking?

Yancy had never been in love with Chuck. There were too many things wrong for that to be a possibility. But fuck if he hadn’t at least thought they were friends.

Tendo kisses his cheek. “Yance, we’ve been over the options here.”

“Yeah, I know. I... I just want to know where I stand with him.”

“Why? None of those end anywhere good. So just let it go, okay? You gotta stop this. Forgive him, forgive yourself, move the hell on.”

He closes his eyes again. Hong Kong is too bright. “Let’s get married and go back to the States. Adopt some kids. No more sharing. No more PPDC.”

Gentle fingers stroke through his hair. “I’m down with that.”

"Even the no more sharing bit?"

"Haven't been with anybody in a while that wasn't you. It's nice."

"We should move to Colorado. Big mountains. No ocean. Run a bar in Vail or something brainless like that. Be nice, wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah. Yeah it would.”

Tendo sounds hopeful. 

“I love you,” Yancy tells him.

And Tendo squeezes his hand.


End file.
